Category: (random lists)

Crispin Glover’s What Is It?

Crispin Glover has been working on What Is It? for close to ten years now. I’ve been reading about it, and waiting to see it for as long as that. He finally brought the film (literally; he travels with it and attends every screening) to Los Angeles for three showings, which I eagerly attended.

I enjoyed some of it, and I admired more of it, but unfortunately, I really can’t say it was worth the wait. If for no other reason, it has kept Glover so busy that he has only appeared in a handful of movies in the past ten years. When he does show up, he’s not always in quality fare. For example, the remake of Willard might have been good, and Gloverhimself really is quite good in it, but it’s never more than a B-Movie. He has been one of my favorite performers since I can remember, and I’d love to see him get roles in smart, interesting oddball films, like River’s Edge and Reuben & Ed. Instead, his trip in getting What Is It? made has been epic on many levels: It started as a short film, he worked hard to get funding to make it into a feature film, he lost all faith in what he calls the “corporate methods of film-making and distribution,” and financed it himself. He did this mostly with money from appearing in Charlie’s Angels, while most of the film sat in a vault in NY and promises in post-production made to him were broken one after the other. He ended up editing it mostly himself, with help from volunteers, and for the past year he’s travelled from city to city showing it, finally ending up back home in LA last week Continue reading Crispin Glover’s What Is It?

Christmas Wish List

I’m pretty sure someone did this last year. Anything anyone is really jonesing to get for Christmas this year, movie-wise? I’ve railed against bizarre box sets before, but I have to admit that this first season SNL set for under $50 sounds pretty sweet. I’ve wanted to see the Albert Brooks films for years, as well as some of the musical guests. Then there’s the ability to program up a full batch of Michael O’Donaghue written sketches. Continue reading Christmas Wish List

Altman favorites and successors

And so it goes. But he leaves behind a remarkable string of work that will go in and out of favor for decades, being rediscovered, evaluated and fawned over. I am sorry that Prairie Home Companion was his last film. It’s nice that it was that rather than The Company or something, so that he got to see another film of his play for more than a week in LA, but even up to Gosford Park, he managed to bring a good sized audience along with him.

So what are your favorites? I love the music scenes in Kansas City, and almost everything about Gosford Park. I’ve watched The Player maybe half a dozen times and could watch it again in a second. Nashville never moved me, good as I realize it is, but it did come in the middle of that remarkable string of films from 70 to 75. For me it’s MASH, The Long Goodbye and California Split, for Elliot Gould as much as Altman, for their creation of a mumbling oddball character and reimagining him three times over. Continue reading Altman favorites and successors

advertisements for the apocalypse

i haven’t watched a lot of movies of late, but if i may be allowed to extend this blog to a discussion of advertisements i’d like to direct your attention in mock-horror to a recent visa check card commercial. this is the one in which everything in a large cafeteria is moving like clockwork when a man shows up with cash and brings it all to a grinding halt. the ad itself seems like it must be a direct riff on the famous modern times sequence in which chaplin inserts himself into the assembly line and brings it to a halt with his body. here, however, the action of the human who breaks the chain, stops the line from moving is greeted with scorn, and mechanization of everyday life is presented as cheerful and hip. mechanization no longer evokes horror; it is presented instead as the bright, sunny prerequisite of paradise.

the damnation of oliver o’grady

a woman filmmaker has made a documentary about a famous pedophialiac priest, using footage she obtained when she went to visit him in ireland and discovered to her surprise that the priest was more than happy to chat away about his deeds and desires. she filmed him for eight days.

i could write this as a comment in the free-for-all that follows the alternet post i link to above, but i don’t have the energy to duke it out with the death penalty invokers and the castration advocates. so excuse me as i take this blog out of the purely filmic and into the political.

witch-hunt/lynching: from the description of the film, the priest sounds totally deranged. he brags about what he did, gets lascivious, indulges in details. now how cool is that? how easy is it to put a deranged man in front of a camera and allow him to crucify himself without the benefit even of a miranda warning? no wonder the man had to flee ireland. judging from the small sample on alternet, there are a lot of people out there who would like a bloody piece of him. Continue reading the damnation of oliver o’grady

I Want Candy

Saw Marie Antoinette yesterday, and I’ll say off the bat I was a little disappointed. I’m tempted to blame my fondness for Lost in Translation, but I think Sophia Coppola’s new film is just okay. It has its moments, most of which are carried by Kirsten Dunst who gives a really terrific performance. And Jason Schwartzman’s Louis Auguste is great. When crowned the new King of France after his grandfather (played by Rip Torn, who like Molly Shannon, Shirley Henderson, and the massive Marianne Faithfull, is underexploited) suddenly dies of smallpox, Louis Auguste bows down, turns his head upward and prays “God help us, we are too young to reign.” Continue reading I Want Candy

Guy Maddin’s Cowards Bend the Knee

Guy Maddin’s been talked about on the blog here , and michael at least had talked about getting some of his movies over Netflix, which hopefully he has. This one was made the same year as his amputee beer baron with glass legs (and Kids in the Hall) epic Saddest Music in the World. It only recently came out on DVD.

I believe that most of it was part of an art installation Maddin did where parts of the ten chapters were viewed by individuals looking through peepholes. Here, each chapter is silent, black and white, about 6 minutes long, and with a jittery editing that makes it feel like you’re hand-cranking the film along backwards and forwards to re-watch little bits over and over again

It involves hockey, abortion clinics/hair salons/brothels, murderous hand transplants, wax museums, ghosts, the Soviet Union, male and female nudity and a kind of tribute to Kenneth Anger’s Fireworks that really I don’t think anyone expected to see. Continue reading Guy Maddin’s Cowards Bend the Knee

The Tenant – Polanski (1976)

I feel like a pig shat in my head. And not because I had too much fun drinking last night. Nope, not a thing to drink – just the normal blinding, incapacitating headaches that come with a life of fear and paranoia in the big city. Still, my apartment is a relatively safe haven, what with its bountiful reserves of candy and bed. Such peaceful abodes seem to have eluded M. Polanski who should have taken the presence of Shelley Winters as concierge as a bad sign from the get-go. Continue reading The Tenant – Polanski (1976)

Two Films

Down in the Valley is a strangely ethereal, contemporary western (deconstructed yes, but not overtly so) which centers on a tender/tragic love affair between Harlan (Edward Norton), a drifter pushing thirty, and a seventeen-year-old girl, October (Evan Rachel Wood), who picks him up one afternoon and takes him to the ocean. They fall in love. Dad (David Morse) gets in the way. Tobe’s diffident younger brother Lonnie (Rory Culkin) believes Harlan to be a kindred spirit; he’s the avuncular ideal Lonnie’s father can never be. Conflicts arise. Harlan’s desire to forge a new family unit by pushing dad aside sets into a motion a series of events where things go uncomfortably awry. I’ll leave it at that. It’s a great film. Continue reading Two Films

Chris Eigeman: Metropolitan (1990) and Kicking and Screaming (1995)

I’m annoyed with myself for being unable to write up a short appreciation of Chris Eigeman here; particularly in the context of these two films. I’ve meant to do it for a while; thankfully I don’t write for a living. These two films have recently come out in Criterion editions, and both were quite excellent debut features by directors who had little idea how to make movies going into these. Though Criterion has been releasing some newer American films, I think it’s worth noting that they didn’t do a batch of Stillman or Baumbach; just these two films close together, which have in common only the presence of Chris Eigeman.

I can also say that both of these movies would be – well, not terrible – but not nearly as good without Eigeman, who raises the bar on both. (Kicking and Screaming at least benefits from a decent Eric Stoltz part, but it turns out it was written for him just as filming began, and it seems a little tacked on.)

So, I’m just throwing this out there hoping that Reynolds or someone else will pick up the ball and write somthing interesting about him and the movies he’s been in. Continue reading Chris Eigeman: Metropolitan (1990) and Kicking and Screaming (1995)